Religio Medici, by by Sir Thomas Browne

Part the Second

Now, for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere notion and of no existence, I
have ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents, and
regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity. And, if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated
and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue — for I am of a constitution so general that it consorts and
sympathizeth with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour, air, anything. I wonder not
at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools, nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but,
being amongst them, make them my common viands; and I find they agree with my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest
a salad gathered in a church-yard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion,
lizard, or salamander; at the sight of a toad or viper, I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I
feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in others: those national repugnances do not touch me,
nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but, where I find their actions in balance with
my countrymen’s, I honour, love, and embrace them, in the same degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but seem to be
framed and constellated unto all. I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden. All places, all airs, make unto
me one country; I am in England everywhere, and under any meridian. I have been shipwrecked, yet am not enemy with the
sea or winds; I can study, play, or sleep, in a tempest. In brief I am averse from nothing: my conscience would give me
the lie if I should say I absolutely detest or hate any essence, but the devil; or so at least abhor anything, but that
we might come to composition. If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is
that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken
asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a
monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra. It is no breach of charity to call these fools; it is the style all holy
writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither
in the name of multitude do I only include the base and minor sort of people: there is a rabble even amongst the
gentry; a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these; men in the same level with
mechanicks, though their fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for their follies. But,
as in casting account three or four men together come short in account of one man placed by himself below them, so
neither are a troop of these ignorant Doradoes79 of that true esteem and value
as many a forlorn person, whose condition doth place him below their feet. Let us speak like politicians; there is a
nobility without heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with another, another filed before him,
according to the quality of his desert, and preeminence of his good parts. Though the corruption of these times, and
the bias of present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in
the integrity and cradle of well ordered polities: till corruption getteth ground; — ruder desires labouring after that
which wiser considerations contemn; — every one having a liberty to amass and heap up riches, and they a licence or
faculty to do or purchase anything.

§2. — This general and indifferent temper of mine doth more nearly dispose me to this noble virtue. It is a
happiness to be born and framed unto virtue, and to grow up from the seeds of nature, rather than the inoculations and
forced grafts of education: yet, if we are directed only by our particular natures, and regulate our inclinations by no
higher rule than that of our reasons, we are but moralists; divinity will still call us heathens. Therefore this great
work of charity must have other motives, ends, and impulsions. I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but
to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my God; I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but his that
enjoined it; I relieve no man upon the rhetorick of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating disposition;
for this is still but moral charity, and an act that oweth more to passion than reason. He that relieves another upon
the bare suggestion and bowels of pity doth not this so much for his sake as for his own; and so, by relieving them, we
relieve ourselves also. It is as erroneous a conceit to redress other men’s misfortunes upon the common considerations
of merciful natures, that it may be one day our own case; for this is a sinister and politick kind of charity, whereby
we seem to bespeak the pities of men in the like occasions. And truly I have observed that those professed
eleemo-synaries, though in a crowd or multitude, do yet direct and place their petitions on a few and selected persons;
there is surely a physiognomy, which those experienced and master mendicants observe, whereby they instantly discover a
merciful aspect, and will single out a face, wherein they spy the signature and marks of mercy. For there are
mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that can read A, B,
C, may read our natures. I hold, moreover, that there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy, not only of men, but of plants
and vegetables; and is every one of them some outward figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward forms. The
finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical, or composed of letters, but of their several
forms, constitutions, parts, and operations, which, aptly joined together, do make one word that doth express their
natures. By these letters God calls the stars by their names; and by this alphabet Adam assigned to every creature a
name peculiar to its nature. Now, there are, besides these characters in our faces, certain mystical figures in our
hands, which I dare not call mere dashes, strokes a la volee or at random, because delineated by a pencil that
never works in vain; and hereof I take more particular notice, because I carry that in mine own hand which I could
never read of nor discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in his acute and singular book of physiognomy, hath made
no mention of chiromancy:80 yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer
addicted to those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein: to which those vagabond and counterfeit
Egyptians did after81 pretend, and perhaps retained a few corrupted
principles, which sometimes might verify their prognosticks.

It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike: now, contrary,
I wonder as much how there should be any. He that shall consider how many thousand several words have been carelessly
and without study composed out of twenty-four letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the
fabrick of one man; shall easily find that this variety is necessary: and it will be very hard that they shall so
concur as to make one portrait like another. Let a painter carelessly limn out a million of faces, and you shall find
them all different; yes, let him have his copy before him, yet, after all his art, there will remain a sensible
distinction: for the pattern or example of everything is the perfectest in that kind, whereof we still come short,
though we transcend or go beyond it; because herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto its copy. Nor doth
the similitude of creatures disparage the variety of nature, nor any way confound the works of God. For even in things
alike there is diversity; and those that do seem to accord do manifestly disagree. And thus is man like God; for, in
the same things that we resemble him we are utterly different from him. There was never anything so like another as in
all points to concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip in, to prevent the identity; without which two
several things would not be alike, but the same, which is impossible.

§3. — But, to return from philosophy to charity, I hold not so narrow a conceit of this virtue as to conceive that
to give alms is only to be charitable, or think a piece of liberality can comprehend the total of charity. Divinity
hath wisely divided the act thereof into many branches, and hath taught us, in this narrow way, many paths unto
goodness; as many ways as we may do good, so many ways we may be charitable. There are infirmities not only of body,
but of soul and fortunes, which do require the merciful hand of our abilities. I cannot contemn a man for ignorance,
but behold him with as much pity as I do Lazarus. It is no greater charity to clothe his body than apparel the
nakedness of his soul. It is an honourable object to see the reasons of other men wear our liveries, and their borrowed
understandings do homage to the bounty of ours. It is the cheapest way of beneficence, and, like the natural charity of
the sun, illuminates another without obscuring itself. To be reserved and caitiff82 in this part of goodness is the sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible than the
pecuniary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I am obliged by the duty of my condition. I make not therefore
my head a grave, but a treasure of knowledge. I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning. I study not for my own
sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that
know less. I instruct no man as an exercise of my knowledge, or with an intent rather to nourish and keep it alive in
mine own head than beget and propagate it in his. And, in the midst of all my endeavours, there is but one thought that
dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacied among my honoured friends. I cannot
fall out or contemn a man for an error, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection; for
controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and
peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there
is of nothing to the purpose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question
first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never determined; for, though they be amply proposed, they
are scarce at all handled; they do so swell with unnecessary digressions; and the parenthesis on the party is often as
large as the main discourse upon the subject. The foundations of religion are already established, and the principles
of salvation subscribed unto by all. There remain not many controversies worthy a passion, and yet never any dispute
without, not only in divinity but inferior arts. What a [Greek omitted] and hot skirmish is betwixt S. and T. in
Lucian!83 How do grammarians hack and slash for the genitive case in
Jupiter!84 How do they break their own pates, to salve that of
Priscian!85 “Si foret in terris, rideret Democritus.“ Yes, even amongst wiser
militants, how many wounds have been given and credits slain, for the poor victory of an opinion, or beggarly conquest
of a distinction! Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actius’s
razor.86 their pens carry farther, and give a louder report than thunder. I
had rather stand the shock of a basilisko87 than in the fury of a merciless
pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the muses, that wiser princes patron the arts, and carry an
indulgent aspect unto scholars; but a desire to have their names eternized by the memory of their writings, and a fear
of the revengeful pen of succeeding ages: for these are the men that, when they have played their parts, and had their
exits, must step out and give the moral of their scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their
virtues and vices. And surely there goes a great deal of conscience to the compiling of an history: there is no
reproach to the scandal of a story; it is such an authentick kind of falsehood, that with authority belies our good
names to all nations and posterity.

§4. — There is another offence unto charity, which no author hath ever written of, and few take notice of, and
that’s the reproach, not of whole professions, mysteries, and conditions, but of whole nations, wherein by opprobrious
epithets we miscall each other, and, by an uncharitable logick, from a disposition in a few, conclude a habit in
all.

St Paul, that calls the Cretians liars, doth it but indirectly, and upon quotation of their own poet.88 It is as bloody a thought in one way as Nero’s was in another.89 For by a word we wound a thousand, and at one blow assassin the honour of a nation.
It is as complete a piece of madness to miscall and rave against the times; or think to recall men to reason by a fit
of passion. Democritus, that thought to laugh the times into goodness, seems to me as deeply hypochondriack as
Heraclitus, that bewailed them. It moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours; that is, in
their fits of folly and madness, as well understanding that wisdom is not profaned unto the world; and it is the
privilege of a few to be virtuous. They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue; for contraries, though they
destroy one another, are yet the life of one another. Thus virtue (abolish vice) is an idea. Again, the community of
sin doth not disparage goodness; for, when vice gains upon the major part, virtue, in whom it remains, becomes more
excellent, and, being lost in some, multiplies its goodness in others, which remain untouched, and persist entire in
the general inundation. I can therefore behold vice without a satire, content only with an admonition, or instructive
reprehension; for noble natures, and such as are capable of goodness, are railed into vice, that might as easily be
admonished into virtue; and we should be all so far the orators of goodness as to protect her from the power of vice,
and maintain the cause of injured truth. No man can justly censure or condemn another; because, indeed, no man truly
knows another. This I perceive in myself; for I am in the dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but
in a cloud. Those that know me but superficially think less of me than I do of myself; those of my near acquaintance
think more; God who truly knows me, knows that I am nothing: for he only beholds me, and all the world, who looks not
on us through a derived ray, or a trajection of a sensible species, but beholds the substance without the help of
accidents, and the forms of things, as we their operations. Further, no man can judge another, because no man knows
himself; for we censure others but as they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend
others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that we all
condemn, self-love. ’Tis the general complaint of these times, and perhaps of those past, that charity grows cold;
which I perceive most verified in those which do most manifest the fires and flames of zeal; for it is a virtue that
best agrees with coldest natures, and such as are complexioned for humility. But how shall we expect charity towards
others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? “Charity begins at home,” is the voice of the world; yet is every man
his greatest enemy, and as it were his own executioner. “Non occides,“ is the commandment of God, yet scarce observed
by any man; for I perceive every man is his own Atropos, and lends a hand to cut the thread of his own days. Cain was
not therefore the first murderer, but Adam, who brought in death; whereof he beheld the practice and example in his own
son Abel; and saw that verified in the experience of another which faith could not persuade him in the theory of
himself.

§5. — There is, I think, no man that apprehends his own miseries less than myself; and no man that so nearly
apprehends another’s. I could lose an arm without a tear, and with few groans, methinks, be quartered into pieces; yet
can I weep most seriously at a play, and receive with a true passion the counterfeit griefs of those known and
professed impostures. It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery, or endeavour to
multiply in any man a passion whose single nature is already above his patience. This was the greatest affliction of
Job, and those oblique expostulations of his friends a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the devil. It is not
the tears of our own eyes only, but of our friends also, that do exhaust the current of our sorrows; which, falling
into many streams, runs more peaceably, and is contented with a narrower channel. It is an act within the power of
charity, to translate a passion out of one breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of itself; for an
affliction, like a dimension, may be so divided as, if not indivisible, at least to become insensible. Now with my
friend I desire not to share or participate, but to engross, his sorrows; that, by making them mine own, I may more
easily discuss them: for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot entreat without
myself, and within the circle of another. I have often thought those noble pairs and examples of friendship, not so
truly histories of what had been, as fictions of what should be; but I now perceive nothing in them but possibilities,
nor anything in the heroick examples of Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, which, methinks, upon some grounds,
I could not perform within the narrow compass of myself. That a man should lay down his life for his friend seems
strange to vulgar affections and such as confine themselves within that worldly principle, “Charity begins at home.”
For mine own part, I could never remember the relations that I held unto myself, nor the respect that I owe unto my own
nature, in the cause of God, my country, and my friends. Next to these three, I do embrace myself. I confess I do not
observe that order that the schools ordain our affections — to love our parents, wives, children, and then our friends;
for, excepting the injunctions of religion, I do not find in myself such a necessary and indissoluble sympathy to all
those of my blood. I hope I do not break the fifth commandment, if I conceive I may love my friend before the nearest
of my blood, even those to whom I owe the principles of life. I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have
loved my friend, as I do virtue, my soul, my God. From hence, methinks, I do conceive how God loves man; what happiness
there is in the love of God. Omitting all other, there are three most mystical unions; two natures in one person; three
persons in one nature; one soul in two bodies. For though, indeed, they be really divided, yet are they so united, as
they seem but one, and make rather a duality than two distinct souls.

§6. — There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles; wherein two so become
one as they both become two: I love my friend before myself, and yet, methinks, I do not love him enough. Some few
months hence, my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all. When I am from him, I am dead
till I be with him. United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other; which being
impossible, these desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction. Another misery there is
in affection; that whom we truly love like our own selves, we forget their looks, nor can our memory retain the idea of
their faces: and it is no wonder, for they are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our own. This noble
affection falls not on vulgar and common constitutions; but on such as are marked for virtue. He that can love his
friend with this noble ardour will in a competent degree effect all. Now, if we can bring our affections to look beyond
the body, and cast an eye upon the soul, we have found out the true object, not only of friendship, but charity: and
the greatest happiness that we can bequeath the soul is that wherein we all do place our last felicity, salvation;
which, though it be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity and pious invocations to desire, if not procure
and further. I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in particular, without a catalogue for my friends; nor
request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I never hear the
toll of a passing bell, though in my mirth, without my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit. I cannot go to
cure the body of my patient, but I forget my profession, and call unto God for his soul. I cannot see one say his
prayers, but, instead of imitating him, I fall into supplication for him, who perhaps is no more to me than a common
nature: and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications, there are surely many happy that never saw me, and enjoy
the blessing of mine unknown devotions. To pray for enemies, that is, for their salvation, is no harsh precept, but the
practice of our daily and ordinary devotions. I cannot believe the story of the Italian;90 our bad wishes and uncharitable desires proceed no further than this life; it is the devil, and the
uncharitable votes of hell, that desire our misery in the world to come.

§7. —“To do no injury nor take none” was a principle which, to my former years and impatient affections, seemed to
contain enough of morality, but my more settled years, and Christian constitution, have fallen upon severer
resolutions. I can hold there is no such things as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and no
such revenge as the contempt of an injury: that to hate another is to malign himself; that the truest way to love
another is to despise ourselves. I were unjust unto mine own conscience if I should say I am at variance with anything
like myself. I find there are many pieces in this one fabrick of man; this frame is raised upon a mass of antipathies:
I am one methinks but as the world, wherein notwithstanding there are a swarm of distinct essences, and in them another
world of contrarieties; we carry private and domestick enemies within, public and more hostile adversaries without. The
devil, that did but buffet St Paul, plays methinks at sharp91 with me. Let me
be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not find the battle of Lepanto,92 passion against reason, reason against faith, faith against the devil, and my conscience against
all. There is another man within me that’s angry with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me. I have no conscience of
marble, to resist the hammer of more heavy offences: nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression of each
single peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven some sins as to
commit some others. For my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my baptism; for my actual transgressions, I
compute and reckon with God but from my last repentance, sacrament, or general absolution; and therefore am not
terrified with the sins or madness of my youth. I thank the goodness of God, I have no sins that want a name. I am not
singular in offences; my transgressions are epidemical, and from the common breath of our corruption. For there are
certain tempers of body which, matched with a humorous depravity of mind, do hath and produce vitiosities, whose
newness and monstrosity of nature admits no name; this was the temper of that lecher that carnaled with a statua, and
the constitution of Nero in his spintrian recreations. For the heavens are not only fruitful in new and unheard-of
stars, the earth in plants and animals, but men’s minds also in villany and vices. Now the dulness of my reason, and
the vulgarity of my disposition, never prompted my invention nor solicited my affection unto any of these; — yet even
those common and quotidian infirmities that so necessarily attend me, and do seem to be my very nature, have so
dejected me, so broken the estimation that I should have otherwise of myself, that I repute myself the most abject
piece of mortality. Divines prescribe a fit of sorrow to repentance: there goes indignation, anger, sorrow, hatred,
into mine, passions of a con trary nature, which neither seem to suit with this action, nor my proper constitution. It
is no breach of charity to ourselves to be at variance with our vices, nor to abhor that part of us, which is an enemy
to the ground of charity, our God; wherein we do but imitate our great selves, the world, whose divided antipathies and
contrary faces do yet carry a charitable regard unto the whole, by their particular discords preserving the common
harmony, and keeping in fetters those powers, whose rebellions, once masters, might be the ruin of all.

§8. — I thank God, amongst those millions of vices I do inherit and hold from Adam, I have escaped one, and that a
mortal enemy to charity — the first and father sin, not only of man, but of the devil — pride; a vice whose name is
comprehended in a monosyllable, but in its nature not circumscribed with a world, I have escaped it in a condition that
can hardly avoid it. Those petty acquisitions and reputed perfections, that advance and elevate the conceits of other
men, add no feathers unto mine. I have seen a grammarian tower and plume himself over a single line in Horace, and show
more pride, in the construction of one ode, than the author in the composure of the whole book. For my own part,
besides the jargon and patois of several provinces, I understand no less than six languages; yet I protest I
have no higher conceit of myself than had our fathers before the confusion of Babel, when there was but one language in
the world, and none to boast himself either linguist or critick. I have not only seen several countries, beheld the
nature of their climes, the chorography of their provinces, topography of their cities, but understood their several
laws, customs, and policies; yet cannot all this persuade the dulness of my spirit unto such an opinion of myself as I
behold in nimbler and conceited heads, that never looked a degree beyond their nests. I know the names and somewhat
more of all the constellations in my horizon; yet I have seen a prating mariner, that could only name the pointers and
the north-star, out-talk me, and conceit himself a whole sphere above me. I know most of the plants of my country, and
of those about me, yet methinks I do not know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled
further than Cheapside. For, indeed, heads of capacity, and such as are not full with a handful or easy measure of
knowledge, think they know nothing till they know all; which being impossible, they fall upon the opinion of Socrates,
and only know they know not anything. I cannot think that Homer pined away upon the riddle of the fishermen, or that
Aristotle, who understood the uncertainty of knowledge, and confessed so often the reason of man too weak for the works
of nature, did ever drown himself upon the flux and reflux of Euripus.93 We do
but learn, today, what our better advanced judgments will unteach tomorrow; and Aristotle doth but instruct us, as
Plato did him, that is, to confute himself. I have run through all sorts, yet find no rest in any: though our first
studies and junior endeavours may style us Peripateticks, Stoicks, or Academicks, yet I perceive the wisest heads
prove, at last, almost all Scepticks,94 and stand like Janus in the field of
knowledge. I have therefore one common and authentick philosophy I learned in the schools, whereby I discourse and
satisfy the reason of other men; another more reserved, and drawn from experience, whereby I content mine own. Solomon,
that complained of ignorance in the height of knowledge, hath not only humbled my conceits, but discouraged my
endeavours. There is yet another conceit that hath sometimes made me shut my books, which tells me it is a vanity to
waste our days in the blind pursuit of knowledge: it is but attending a little longer, and we shall enjoy that, by
instinct and infusion, which we endeavour at here by labour and inquisition. It is better to sit down in a modest
ignorance, and rest contented with the natural blessing of our own reasons, than by the uncertain knowledge of this
life with sweat and vexation, which death gives every fool gratis, and is an accessary of our glorification.

§9. — I was never yet once, and commend their resolutions who never marry twice. Not that I disallow of second
marriage; as neither in all cases of polygamy, which considering some times, and the unequal number of both sexes, may
be also necessary. The whole world was made for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman. Man is the whole world, and
the breath of God; woman the rib and crooked piece of man. I could be content that we might procreate like trees,
without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition:
it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled
imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed. I speak not in
prejudice, nor am averse from that sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful. I can look a whole day
with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better, to
affect all harmony; and sure there is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter
than the sound of an instrument. For there is a musick wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far
we may maintain “the musick of the spheres:” for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no
sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically
composed delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all
church-musick. For myself, not only from my obedience but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even that vulgar
and tavern-musick which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound
contemplation of the first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an
hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God — such a melody to the ear, as the whole
world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which
intellectually sounds in the ears of God. I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath
its nearest sympathy unto musick: thus some, whose temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of * “Urbem a Romam in principio reges habuere.” their souls, are born poets, though indeed all are
naturally inclined unto rhythm. This made Tacitus, in the very first line of his story, fall upon a verse;* and Cicero,
the worst of poets, but declaiming for a poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a *
“In qua me non inferior mediocriter esse.”— Pro Archia Poeta. perfect hexameter.* I feel not in me
those sordid and unchristian desires of my profession; I do not secretly implore and wish for plagues, rejoice at
famines, revolve ephemerides and almanacks in expectation of malignant aspects, fatal conjunctions, and eclipses. I
rejoice not at unwholesome springs nor unseasonable winters: my prayer goes with the husbandman’s; I desire everything
in its proper season, that neither men nor the times be out of temper. Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the malady
of my patient be not a disease unto me. I desire rather to cure his infirmities than my own necessities. Where I do him
no good, methinks it is scarce honest gain, though I confess ’tis but the worthy salary of our well intended
endeavours. I am not only ashamed but heartily sorry, that, besides death, there are diseases incurable; yet not for my
own sake or that they be beyond my art, but for the general cause and sake of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend
as mine own. And, to speak more generally, those three noble professions which all civil commonwealths do honour, are
raised upon the fall of Adam, and are not any way exempt from their infirmities. There are not only diseases incurable
in physick, but cases indissolvable in law, vices incorrigible in divinity. If general councils may err, I do not see
why particular courts should be infallible: their perfectest rules are raised upon the erroneous reasons of man, and
the laws of one do but condemn the rules of another; as Aristotle oft-times the opinions of his predecessors, because,
though agreeable to reason, yet were not consonant to his own rules and the logick of his proper principles. Again — to
speak nothing of the sin against the Holy Ghost, whose cure not only, but whose nature is unknown — I can cure the gout
or stone in some, sooner than divinity, pride, or avarice in others. I can cure vices by physick when they remain
incurable by divinity, and they shall obey my pills when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say,
we all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all diseases. There is no catholicon or universal
remedy I know, but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is nectar, and a pleasant
potion of im mortality.

§10. — For my conversation, it is, like the sun’s, with all men, and with a friendly aspect to good and bad.
Methinks there is no man bad; and the worst best, that is, while they are kept within the circle of those qualities
wherein they are good. There is no man’s mind of so discordant and jarring a temper, to which a tuneable disposition
may not strike a harmony. Magnae virtutes, nec minora vitia; it is the posy95 of the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst. There are, in the most depraved and venomous
dispositions, certain pieces that remain untouched, which by an antiperistasis96 become more excellent, or by the excellency of their antipathies are able to preserve themselves
from the contagion of their enemy vices, and persist entire beyond the general corruption. For it is also thus in
nature: the greatest balsams do lie enveloped in the bodies of the most powerful corrosives. I say moreover, and I
ground upon experience, that poisons contain within themselves their own antidote, and that which preserves them from
the venom of themselves; without which they were not deleterious to others only, but to themselves also. But it is the
corruption that I fear within me; not the contagion of commerce without me. ’Tis that unruly regiment within me, that
will destroy me; ’tis that I do infect myself; the man without a navel97 yet
lives in me. I feel that original canker corrode and devour me: and therefore, “Defenda me, Dios, de me!“ “Lord,
deliver me from myself!” is a part of my litany, and the first voice of my retired imaginations. There is no man alone,
because every man is a * “Cic. de Off.,” I. iii. microcosm, and carries the whole
world about him. “Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus,“* though it be the apothegm of a wise man is yet true in the
mouth of a fool: for indeed, though in a wilderness, a man is never alone; not only because he is with himself, and his
own thoughts, but because he is with the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that unruly rebel that
musters up those disordered motions which accompany our sequestered imaginations. And to speak more narrowly, there is
no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone, and by itself, but God; — who is his own circle,
and can subsist by himself; all others, besides their dissimilary and heterogeneous parts, which in a manner multiply
their natures, cannot subsist without the concourse of God, and the society of that hand which doth uphold their
natures. In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by its self, which is not truly one, and such is only God: all
others do transcend an unity, and so by consequence are many.

§11. — Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not a history, but a piece of poetry,
and would sound to common ears like a fable. For the world, I count it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to
live, but to die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on:
for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my
outside, perusing only my condition and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas’s shoulders.98 The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of the
heavenly and celestial part within us. That mass of flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind. That surface that
tells the heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me I have any. I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty.
Though the number of the ark do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind. Whilst I study to find how I am a
microcosm, or little world, I find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity in us;
something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me, I am the image of God, as
well as Scripture. He that understands not thus much hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the
alphabet of man. Let me not injure the felicity of others, if I say I am as happy as any. Ruat coelum, fiat
voluntas tua,“ salveth all; so that, whatsoever happens, it is but what our daily prayers desire. In brief, I am
content; and what should providence add more? Surely this is it we call happiness, and this do I enjoy; with this I am
happy in a dream, and as content to enjoy a happiness in a fancy, as others in a more apparent truth and reality. There
is surely a nearer apprehension of anything that delights us, in our dreams, than in our waked senses. Without this I
were unhappy; for my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering unto me that I am from my friend, but my friendly
dreams in the night requite me, and make me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my
good rest; for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of
happiness. And surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of
this life are as mere dreams, to those of the next, as the phantasms of the night, to the conceits of the day. There is
an equal delusion in both; and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other. We are somewhat more
than ourselves in our sleeps; and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of
sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity, my
ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpio. I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I
have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise99 of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action,
apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the con ceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then
fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions: but our grosser
memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to
our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that which hath passed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of
sleep, hath not, methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have corrected it; for those
noctambulos and night-walkers, though in their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their senses. We must
therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and
ecstatick souls do walk about in their own corpses, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seem to hear,
see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform
them. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves.
For then the soul beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse
in a strain above mortality.

§12. — We term sleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of
life. ’Tis indeed a part of life that best expresseth death; for every man truly lives, so long as he acts his nature,
or some way makes good the faculties of himself. Themistocles therefore, that slew his soldier in his sleep, was a
merciful executioner: ’tis a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented; I wonder the fancy of Lucan and
Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily; a death which Adam died
before his mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death. In fine, so like
death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy
with God:—

The night is come, like to the day; Depart not thou, great God, away. Let not my sins, black as the night, Eclipse
the lustre of thy light. Keep still in my horizon; for to me The sun makes not the day, but thee. Thou whose nature
cannot sleep, On my temples sentry keep; Guard me ‘gainst those watchful foes, Whose eyes are open while mine close.
Let no dreams my head infest, But such as Jacob’s temples blest. While I do rest, my soul advance: Make my sleep a holy
trance: That I may, my rest being wrought, Awake into some holy thought, And with as active vigour run My course as
doth the nimble sun. Sleep is a death; — Oh make me try, By sleeping, what it is to die! And as gently lay my head On
my grave, as now my bed. Howe’er I rest, great God, let me Awake again at last with thee. And thus assured, behold I
lie Securely, or to wake or die. These are my drowsy days; in vain I do now wake to sleep again: Oh come that hour,
when I shall never Sleep again, but wake for ever!

This is the dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep; after which I
close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection.

§13. — The method I should use in distributive justice, I often observe in commutative; and keep a geometrical
proportion in both, whereby becoming equable to others, I become unjust to myself, and supererogate in that common
principle, “Do unto others as thou wouldst be done unto thyself.” I was not born unto riches, neither is it, I think,
my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the freedom of my mind, and frankness of my disposition, were able to contradict
and cross my fates: for to me avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness; to conceive ourselves
urinals, or be persuaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor so many degrees beyond the power of
hellebore,100 as this. The opinions of theory, and positions of men, are not
so void of reason, as their practised conclusions. Some have held that snow is black, that the earth moves, that the
soul is air, fire, water; but all this is philosophy: and there is no delirium, if we do but speculate the folly and
indisputable dotage of avarice. To that subterraneous idol, and god of the earth, I do confess I am an atheist. I
cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores; whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have within my
body, it hath no influence nor operation without. I would not entertain a base design, or an action that should call me
villain, for the Indies; and for this only do I love and honour my own soul, and have methinks two arms too few to
embrace myself. Aristotle is too severe, that will not allow us to be truly liberal without wealth, and the bountiful
hand of fortune; if this be true, I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions, and bountiful well
wishes. But if the example of the mite be not only an act of wonder, but an example of the noblest charity, surely poor
men may also build hospitals, and the rich alone have not erected cathedrals. I have a private method which others
observe not; I take the opportunity of myself to do good; I borrow occasion of charity from my own necessities, and
supply the wants of others, when I am in most need myself: for it is an honest stratagem to take advantage of
ourselves, and so to husband the acts of virtue, that, where they are defective in one circumstance, they may repay
their want, and multiply their goodness in another. I have not Peru in my desires, but a competence and ability to
perform those good works to which he hath inclined my nature. He is rich who hath enough to be charitable; and it is
hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness. “He that giveth to the poor lendeth
to the Lord:” there is more rhetorick in that one sentence than in a library of sermons. And indeed, if those sentences
were understood by the reader with the same emphasis as they are delivered by the author, we needed not those volumes
of instructions, but might be honest by an epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a beggar without relieving
his necessities with my purse, or his soul with my prayers. These scenical and accidental differences between us cannot
make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both: there is under these centoes101 and miserable outsides, those mutilate and semi bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own,
whose genealogy is God’s as well as ours, and * “The poor ye have always with you.”
in as fair a way to salvation as ourselves. Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without our poverty take
away the object of charity; not understanding only the commonwealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecy of
Christ.*

§14. — Now, there is another part of charity, which is the basis and pillar of this, and that is the love of God,
for whom we love our neighbour; for this I think charity, to love God for himself, and our neighbour for God. And all
that is truly amiable is God, or as it were a divided piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow of himself. Nor is
it strange that we should place affection on that which is invisible: all that we truly love is thus. What we adore
under affection of our senses deserves not the honour of so pure a title. Thus we adore virtue, though to the eyes of
sense she be invisible. Thus that part of our noble friends that we love is not that part that we embrace, but that
insensible part that our arms cannot embrace. God being all goodness, can love nothing but himself; he loves us but for
that part which is as it were himself, and the traduction of his Holy Spirit. Let us call to assize the loves of our
parents, the affection of our wives and children, and they are all dumb shows and dreams, without reality, truth, or
constancy. For first there is a strong bond of affection between us and our parents; yet how easily dissolved! We
betake ourselves to a woman, forgetting our mother in a wife, and the womb that bare us in that which shall bear our
image. This woman blessing us with children, our affection leaves the level it held before, and sinks from our bed unto
our issue and picture of posterity: where affection holds no steady mansion; they growing up in years, desire our ends;
or, applying themselves to a woman, take a lawful way to love another better than ourselves. Thus I perceive a man may
be buried alive, and behold his grave in his own issue.

§15. — I conclude therefore, and say, there is no * Who holds that the sun is the centre
of the world. happiness under (or, as Copernicus* will have it, above) the sun; nor any crambe102 in that repeated verity and burthen of all the wisdom of Solomon: “All is vanity
and vexation of spirit;” there is no felicity in that the world adores. Aristotle, whilst he labours to refute the
ideas of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum is a chimaera; and there is no such
thing as his felicity. That wherein God himself is happy, the holy angels are happy, in whose defect the devils are
unhappy; — that dare I call happiness: whatsoever conduceth unto this, may, with an easy metaphor, deserve that name;
whatsoever else the world terms happiness is, to me, a story out of Pliny, a tale of Bocace or Malizspini, an
apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is no more of happiness than the name. Bless me in this life with but the
peace of my conscience, command of my affections, the love of thyself and my dearest friends, and I shall be happy
enough to pity Caesar! These are, O Lord, the humble desires of my most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call
happiness on earth; wherein I set no rule or limit to thy hand or providence; dispose of me according to the wisdom of
thy pleasure. Thy will be done, though in my own undoing.

90. Alluding to the story of the Italian, who, having been provoked by a
person he met, put a poniard to his heart, and threatened to kill him if he would not blaspheme God; and the stranger
doing so, the Italian killed him at once, that he might be damned, having no time to repent.

92. The battle here referred to was the one between Don John of Austria and
the Turkish fleet, near Lepanto, in 1571. The battle of Lepanto (that is, the capture of the town by the Turks) did not
take place till 1678.

93. Several authors say that Aristotle died of grief because he could not
find out the reason for the ebb and flow of the tide in Epirus.